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Michicko Kasahara, Chief Curator of Tokyo’s Metropolitan

Museum of Photography, gives Amanda Suriya Ariffin her

views on gender issues and feminism, and how they impact

female artists

UPON first meeting 55-year-old Michicko Kasahara, an established

authority in Japanese contemporary art, I place her as not a day over 42.

The soft-spoken curator, sitting with impeccable posture, has a dry wit

that she exhibits at the most unexpected moments.

Having first become a curator with the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of

Photography in 1989, this graduate in sociology from Japan continued

22 July 2012 | last updated at 11:34PM

Shifting paradigms

By Amanda Suriya Ariff in

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Michiko Kasahara

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her studies at Syracuse University in New York.

She admits easily without embarrassment, “my English was not so good,

and I took a photography course, because photography didn’t require

me to speak English,” to which she adds, noting my amusement, “but my

teacher really liked my work so I changed my major (from sociology) and

then I realised: photography needs more English, especially with the

technical skills!”

Kasahara visited Malaysia recently for the first time to speak at, and be

part of, the continuing series of the Vision Culture Lecture programme

organised and hosted by the Shalini Ganendra Fine Art gallery. She

joins the roll call of past luminary speakers and curators that include

Debra Diamond of the Smithsonian and Christopher Phillips of the

International Centre of Photography.

GENDER ISSUES

But the switch was a happy one, as she notes: “The issues I saw in

sociology were the same as the field I pursued in photography: gender

issues and feminism.” And she has plenty to say about these issues, as

she relates how she grew up in “the rural countryside in Japan” with a

strong grandmother and mother who ran the family business with a firm

grip.

Shattering preconceived notions of the stereotypical demure, submissive

Asian woman further, Kasahara is unapologetic about her views on

female artists grappling with the themes of sexuality and gender, more so

in the 1980s.

CRITICAL AGE

“I was 28 years old at that time, in ‘80s Japan, and there was social

pressure on women - with marriage, and sex, and the social context after

marriage,” Kasahara states, her composure belying the steely edge in

her voice, “and I was interested in photography critique, in other artists’

work, like that of Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman.

“In the ‘80s and the ‘90s,” she adds, “women’s consciousness had been

changed dramatically.” Artists such as Sherman, she relates, analysed

women’s roles.

“I’m not married and I don’t have children, and this year I will be 55. I saw,

in the ‘80s, 24 was seen as the critical age for women; they said women

are like Christmas decorations; after 25, nobody wants to ‘buy them’.”

Kasahara grew up with strong female role models within her own family

(“even though, you know, in the Japanese system, men are in power —

and they are still,”) and with her love for photography, it is no surprise

that she dedicated her efforts to curating milestone exhibitions in Japan

that were, by her admission, not only controversial but also ground-

breaking. She was one of the very few to curate exhibitions with a strong

gender theme.

REDEFINING ROLES

“This is the main issue,” Kasahara emphasises, remembering her

immersion in American culture in the ‘80s when gender roles were being

redefined, hinting it may have been a serendipitous extension of her

having grown up with take-charge women in her family.

“At that time, almost all of the curators in Japan were men. I am part of

the second generation of women curators,” she remembers, “but the

first curator dealing with gender issues.”

PERSPECTIVE: Let's

sober up

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Copyright © 2011 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2011 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2011 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad. All rights reserved.

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From the 1991 exhibition, where she featured international artists

depicting contemporary women to the 1998 Love’s Body exhibition of

nudes in photos, Kasahara was celebrated as a star curator in her

homeland, after the initial wave of controversy within conservative

quarters had died away.

“It was the professionals who really loved my exhibitions,” she says,

smiling as she recollects. “But there were so many conservatives and

there I was breaking the rules.”

In part, she says she tried to convey the message that we should view

each other as people, without gender clouding the picture. And her

efforts did not go unnoticed for Kasahara holds the distinction for having

been appointed the Commissioner for Japan at the 51st Venice Biennale

in 2005. (The event is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes

place once every two years in Venice.)

And she raises an interesting paradoxical viewpoint when she confidently

states she gets “irritated by otaku, manga and anime” because she likes

“mature, adult art,” even though the former is known for producing

androgynous icons.

But she is determined to push paradigms of gender and sexuality by

curating works of photography that give voice to these issues.

I ask her about the best part of her work. She purrs in response. “When

the exhibition has taken a long time to put together, after the final

installation, the day before opening, and it’s just me, and the art, and

nobody else.”

The Shalini Ganendra Fine Art gallery is also home to various other

works, including Chin Kon Yit — Revisited (Sketchbook Watercolours). It

features 58 original watercolours depicting Malaysian architecture and

scenes, from now until Sept 15.

For more details, call 03-7960 4740 or visit www.shaliniganendra.com

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